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elementary question: are there PCMCIA DVD drives; and are they faster than USB2?

post #1 of 8
10/11/06 at 10:34am
Thread Starter 
I have a notebook with an internal CD-DVD read write drive. Everything is working perfectly. But I'm thinking it would be nice to have a second drive (external) to make burning CDs or DVDs easier.

There are USB2 drives, but are there also PCMCIA drives; and do they run faster?
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post #2 of 8
10/11/06 at 11:21am
- Extra Post - Deleted
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post #3 of 8
10/11/06 at 11:22am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Berry
PCMCIA has a bus speed of 133 megabytes per second. USB2 is limited to a max of 60 megabytes per second.

Transferring to a laptop via either PCMCIA or USB2, you'll find that the hard disk speed is the limiting factor more than the transfer protocol is, but PCMCIA transfers do seem faster. I've gotten a 4gb card to transfer in about 3 minutes through PCMCIA, about 4 minutes USB.

But that's not where PCMCIA shines; it's when you transfer to two separate drives at the same time. If I copy from the internal slot to the laptop internal drive, and also to an external drive simultaneously, it does so with nearly no slowdown; it takes about 3:20 to copy to both drives at once. That wouldn't happen with USB.

Quote from berry
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post #4 of 8
10/12/06 at 10:12pm
Interesting. Expresscard is 500MB/sec, so I wonder if there would be a further increase using it, even though use wouldn't even come close to reaching max theoretical bandwidth.
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post #5 of 8
10/12/06 at 11:53pm
get a 3.5" firewire enclosure and slap a 16x desktop burner in there.
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post #6 of 8
10/13/06 at 11:19am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by awingedpig
get a 3.5" firewire enclosure and slap a 16x desktop burner in there.

Thanks for the good idea!
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post #7 of 8
10/13/06 at 12:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by awingedpig
get a 3.5" firewire enclosure and slap a 16x desktop burner in there.

I'm assuming you mean a 5.25" enclosure? Firewire, USB2, shouldn't make much of a difference in performance, or even price for that matter. Take your pick
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post #8 of 8
10/13/06 at 4:49pm
For those kind of data transfer, USB2 and Firewire are comparable. The next generation will have eSATA ports (external SATA) that will make USB2 and Firewire obsolete. Plug in any kind of SATA device just like you would your SATA hard drives
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NotebookForums.com › Forums › General Notebook Discussions › Notebook Forums - General › elementary question: are there PCMCIA DVD drives; and are they faster than USB2?